05:30 pm - Happy Independence Day!Happy Birthday to the United States of America.

I shall celebrate with a tiny piece of Americana from the b3ta newsletter. It actually comes from last week's newsletter, but this has the advantage that there won't be twenty times as many people wanting to download the resource as the web site which serves it can stand. It also feels more appropriate today, somehow.

Anyone below possibly thirty, thirty-five or forty is likely to have seen one of the many closely related Sesame Street pinball "counting to twelve" animations at some point in their lives. Sesame Street is such a global constant these days that I'm pretty confident that this will apply to nigh on everyone in the English-speaking world who sees this regardless of geography. (I'd be curious to know from the Norwegians and Germans who see this whether there exist dubbed versions of the song in other languages for the local version of the Street.) Nevertheless, the source material remains distinctively American.

As b3ta put it, "Thorpe has made a lovely track sampling The Pinball Song from Sesame Street. A friend of his has made a video featuring the footage that accompanied it on the show. It's great, a funky nostalgia fest."

The psychedelia extends into the Beatles' Yellow Submarine cartoon and I have to say the remix is more successful when it sticks to Sesame Street canon. Nevertheless, it's a great day for America and a great day for pinball.